Water properly to avoid spring damage

    There are evergreen trees in the Golden Plains Area where the tips are browning and losing needles. Austrian pines and Ponderosa trees seem to be most affected. Austrian pines are not native to the altitude of the plains and need regular watering. Ponderosa pine are one of Colorado’s native pines that are listed as one of the major species of trees for our state.
    The specific problem this spring is winter injury. This can be areas of dehydration on the needle from the tip browning or various spots on the needle. Sometimes, there are fungal diseases that mimic winter injury damage. If there are no fungal spores present on the needle, then the damage would be winter injury.
    Austrian pines are showing signs of drought stress. The older needles are being dropped from the trees and the ends of the needles are browning. When this happens, you will begin to see through the tree. Drought, as we say, starts from the inside to the ends of the branches. Austrian pines are not able to withstand drought and have issues with our extremes of little supplemental water in the winter to wet springs. These Austrian pines need regular watering. This means some form of consistent water on a regular basis.
    If we move into a hot summer, supplemental water is necessary. Giving windbreaks a deep root watering early on during an extended drought will help them survive. But doing the deep root watering too often will cause a dependency on the trees. If we face one year of drought this summer, this causes three years of setback in our landscapes.

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.